Page:Weird Tales Volume 2 Number 2 (1923-09).djvu/81

Your glasses t'home—you might consider this story for publication.

"N. B.—Anyway, you started something when your magazine made its first appearance. At least with me. Man, it's a whangdoodle—that's what it is! I bought your first issue through curiosity; I've purchased the following ones by design. You don't need my good luck wishes. All who have read my copies (I pass them around to my friends) have become fans."

Still another letter concerning eerie things in real life comes from Curtis F. Day, of 38 Browning Road, Somerville, Mass., and here it is:

"My Dear Mr. Baird: I have just been reading your second issue of Weird Tales. It's just the kind of magazine I hoped would start sometime. I think it fascinatingly interesting.

"One of the most weird experiences that a man or woman can have is that of being buried alive. I have been greatly interested in this matter and have collected a deal of material along this line. Would not a department of authentic cases of living burial interest your readers? I have talked with two people who were buried alive, but were rescued in time and the account of their hallucinations and feelings is about as weird as anything I ever read in Poe or any of the older writers. I also have the facts in many other cases."

And Catherine H. Griggs, of 69 Randolph Avenue, Waterbury, Conn., dwells, in her letter to us, on both the aforementioned subjects. This is what she has to say:

"My Dear Mr. Baird: Weird Tales seems to fill a much needed place in modern fiction, already overrun with detective stories, or those of the 'confession' type. If you keep your magazine to its present policy it should be a great success. The contents of the first number are most pleasing and show better literary quality than the average short story...

"May I, as an admiring reader, venture a suggestion—if it seems practical? As a member of the Society for Psychic Research, I happen to know that they have many really absorbing short stories, published in the monthly Journal, told in the first person by the individual who had the experience. I do not know what legal red tape surrounds such matters, but, if possible, I think it would be interesting to have just one such story in each issue of Weird Tales, quoted directly from the Society for Psychic Research...

"In the November, 1918, issue, for instance, I wrote an account of how my mother and aunt seemed to see a ghost in an old hotel in Vienna. Later they learned that the hotel had been the residence of the Dukes of Württemberg, and their rooms were part of the private suite; and the old gentleman seen by my aunt was identified by her from the likeness of a portrait statue on the stairs. She had not seen the statue before she saw the old man."

We take it that all our readers enjoyed Paul Ellsworth Triem's thrilling serial, "The Evening Wolves," which we published in our last two issues; and, assuming that you will likewise be interested in what he has to say about us, also about weird fiction in general, we have pleasure in quoting this letter from him:

"Dear Mr. Baird: I intended to send you this story last week, but some trade paper business came up that had to be covered at once. At any rate, here it is now. If you like it and want more, better let me know as soon as convenient.

"We—the Triem family—have just been giving the second number of Weird Tales a thorough reading, and I want to congratulate you on it. In some ways we are the typical American family. We want everything in a story—thrills, plausibility, convincingness, live characters and a concrete and effective background. Of course, not all of the stories in the magazine achieved all of these impossibilities, but a surprising number did. We read aloud, and that is a more severe test than reading silently. I think we were particularly surprised at the number of first-class stories you had secured from little known writers.

"And the theory back of Weird Tales is scientifically sound. Ninety-nine people out of one hundred in America today are suffering from balked dispositions—inhibitions—suppressions. We are cave men, but this disease of civilization has been too much for us. We want to go out and knock down our dinner with a stone hammer, and instead we have to go to the cafeteria and carry a tray. Strong emotional situations are as necessary to us as sunshine and fresh air; and the only place we can get them is in our reading. Of late years the silly publishers have decreed that we may not even have this solace—and now comes Weird. May it live long, and prosper!"

Equally interesting is the letter from H. P. Lovecraft, another master of the weird tale, from whom we have accepted some stories for your entertainment. Mr. Lovecraft's letter, unlike Mr. Triem's, doesn't exactly flatter Weird Tales, but we are nevertheless glad to pass it on to you:

"My Dear Sir: Having a habit of writing weird, macabre, and fantastic stories for my own amusement, I have lately been simultaneously hounded by nearly a dozen well-meaning friends into deciding to submit a few of these Gothic horrors to your newly-founded periodical. The decision is herewith carried out. Enclosed are five tales written between 1917 and 1923.

"Of these the first two are probably the best. If they be unsatisfactory, the rest need not be read.

The Statement of Randolph Carter is, in the main, an actual dream experienced on the night of December 21–22, 1919; the characters being myself (Randolph Carter) and my friend, Samuel Love—"